“You say your husband is a cold-blooded murderer?”
“Yes.” I locked my jaw. “I watched him kill an innocent in his basement.”
My grandfather paused for a moment, staring at me with raised eyebrows like he knew something I didn’t. “Adrik killed a man, yes,” he replied. “But that man was far from innocent.”
“Wh—what do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.
He withdrew an envelope from his drawer, set it on the table, then slid it over to me.
“What’s this?” I picked it up.
When I opened it, it was a photo of a man in a black outfit, a black hat, and an assault rifle hanging on his back.
“Do you recognize him?”
I peered more closely, but the face wasn’t familiar. Of course it wasn’t. I didn’t keep hit men as friends. “No.”
“That’s theinnocent manyou’re rambling about.”
My breath hitched.
He looked me straight in the eyes. “And he was sent to kill you.”
My heart sank into my stomach, and the knot in my chest tightened. “I don’t—I don’t understand,” I stuttered.
“As Adrik Tarasov’s new wife, you’ve inherited his enemies,” he explained. “Someone sent this man to end you. But your husband intercepted him before he could complete his mission.”
I leaned back in my chair, reality hitting me harder than ever.
“You’re alive right now because your husband didn’t hesitate to kill the assassin sent after you,” he said. “That monster you hate so much is the reason you’re still breathing God’s air.”
I buried my face in my palms, my mind reeling with a thousand perspectives on this matter. It was true that Adrik had saved my life without me even knowing. It was true that he killed that man to protect me.
However, it was also true that I would never have needed saving if I weren’t part of his life. Grandpa said it himself, as Adrik Tarasov’s new wife, I inherited his enemies. That man only wanted me dead because I was related to Adrik Tarasov.
So at the end of the day, I was right. My grandfather endangered my life the day he sold me off to a fuckin’ Mafia boss. And although Adrik might have saved my life, it still didn’t change the fact that he also played a major role in putting me at risk in the first place.
Neither my grandfather nor my husband was innocent of this. They were both as guilty as the man sent to end my life.
His words snapped me back to the present: “I know you don’t like this, but…it’s your reality now.”
“My reality is to live in constant fear and always look over my shoulders,” I began, the words spilling out in a nervous rush, “because I don’t know where or when some nutjob will plan another attack on my life.”
He let out a quiet chuckle. “You’ll get used to it.”
This old man can’t be serious, can he?
My face twisted into a frown. “That’s the best you can tell me right now? That I’ll get used to it? For real?”
“The Tarasovs protect their own,” he said calmly. “Andyou,my dear, are one of their own.” He leaned closer. “If you hadn’t witnessed that scene, he never would’ve told you, and you never would’ve found out. That’s how real men operate; they protect their own without announcing it.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong.
“Look, you might not agree with my methods,” he continued, “but I would never match my flesh and blood with a weakling. If only your mother had listened to me all those years ago….” His voice trailed off into silence.
Again, he wasn’t entirely wrong. My father was a deadbeat who abandoned my mom after all she’d given up for him.
Amidst all of this chaos and commotion, one question lingered. Would Adrik still stick to the contract and let me go after a year? I’d witnessed a crime with my own two eyes and knew a little too much about his Mafia side.
